Lesson 25 - Revelation 12

[Music] [Music] now today we're going to start a new section if we can call it that of the book of Revelation now sometimes it can be helpful to organize a Bible book into sections for the purpose of study in order to help us get a better overall picture of it even though there's no doubt that the author didn't necessarily construct it with that kind of thought process in mind nevertheless provided we stay true to the words and to the concepts that are presented there is no harm and there is some advantage to such an approach especially when the subject matter is deep and complex and in this case it surely is now before we do that however I want to take just a few minutes to sum up where we're at since its was a few months ago that we opened our Bibles to the book of Revelation and I think it's good to do we just kind of go back for a minute and and put it all together so with that the Apostle John who was one of the original twelve disciples of Christ received prophetic visions from God while he was banished by the Roman authorities to the island of Patmos and he was given one specific instruction by God that is critical to our understanding and perspective of this apocalypse and revelation 119 it says this so write down what you see both what is now and what will happen afterwards that one short sentence commands that John's job is only to write down what he sees he's not to interpret he's not to comment he's not to rework it or to make these visions his own and yet the bulk of modern Bible commentators approach revelation as something John created out of his own mind to set forth his own agenda to offer his own vision of the present in the future at least the present contemporary to his time some even see it as little more than a coded diatribe against Rome so as we study this the final book of our Bible we have a critical choice to make are the contents what John claims it is direct unadulterated truthful profound visions from God or is this John's personal work that's along the lines of the letters he wrote to believers that gives us four books in the New Testament not counting revelation now I for one trust our Bible as God's Word so I go with the former the book of Revelation is John faithfully recounting the visions he was given without modification and I'll tell you often he was clueless as to what those visions meant to impart but he didn't sink to speculation or guesswork he left that up to his future readers the first vision he was given amounts to that that famous seven letters to the seven believing congregations in Asia now each letter gave the pertinent church actually the there were synagogues at this time God's perspective of their spiritual condition as a community of believers some of them came with commendation others came with condemnation divine warning was also involved and the warning usually took the form of demanding change within that congregation or by certain individuals within that group or the threat was their salvation would be canceled now next John was given a glimpse of heaven where he saw the ancient one God the Father seated on a throne with the Lamb that was slain God the Son Messiah Yeshua standing before him now clearly a hierarchy was established with the father's preeminence and the sons subservience in God's throne room stood for unique living beings full of all-seeing eyes that guarded God's throne and they also held great Authority there were also 24 elders present whose main jobs seemed to be praising and worshipping the Most High now without doubt these were Levites that had accepted Yeshua as their Savior now the ancient one then held out a scroll with seven seals on it as a mighty angel then asked no one in particular who is worthy to open this scroll and break its seals there was no response because no one in heaven had the merit that is until the Lion of Judah the Lamb that was slain step forward and when he did the 24 elders broke into a song of phrase singing to the lamb and confirming that you are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and as the lamb began removing those seals one by one each broken seal revealed a consequence the first four seals that were opened sent forth a group of horses each of a different color each carrying a rider on its back that was given the duty of bringing chaos to mankind these are best known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse now altogether the seven seals are said to be seven judgments from God however I take a little exception to that notion the first four seals the four horsemen do not bring God's supernatural wrath down upon mankind rather all they do is stir up and excite the evil inclination that is present within all humans and thus the wickedness that we do to one another on a regular basis increases exponentially upon the sending of these four horsemen Wars increase so famine increases because famine increases plagues and disease increase and the result is violence and death and destruction on a heretofore unprecedented scale worldwide when the fifth seal is opened God's wrath not only doesn't happen it is specifically said to be postponed it is revealed to us that residing under the heavenly altar are countless souls of those who were martyred for their trust in God and in Yeshua and they were asking God to do justice avenge our deaths they pled with him they were given white robes meaning they were purified but they were told they'd have to wait a little longer before the Lord brought justice to their killers but when the sixth seal was broken God's wrath broke out beginning with a terrifying disturbance of the cosmos that even had the bravest of men preferring to be killed rather than enduring it suddenly there's this unexpected interlude the narrative just pauses as we're then introduced to the 144,000 selected individuals that were sealed for God's protection and this group consisted of twelve thousand from each of Israel's 12 tribes in fact each tribe was named and after the interlude then the seventh seal was broken and more wrath was sent upon the earth so now having completed the cycle of the seven sealed judgments a new set of judgments called the trumpet judgments is introduced and of course there are seven of them and the first trumpet judgment affected the dry land the second one the oceans the third one our freshwater sources the fourth one the sky above us when the fifth trumpet was sounded the abyss under the earth was opened and demons in the form of strange locust white creatures swarmed upward to the surface the abyss is not the place of the dead it's the place where evil rebellious spirits are locked up these locusts were sent not to harm human beings a rather they were sent to harm but not kill human beings and they were not to harm any plant life kind of the opposite of what locust normally do and because they did not kill instead they inflicted unbearable incurable pain for a period of five months this judgment was given the secondary name of the first woe now a sixth trumpet was blown and with it came an order for four angels who stood along the Euphrates River to allow or perhaps in some way to lead a massive satanic army of 200 million across that River and into Israel the death and the destruction inevitably spread as Wars do beyond the immediate area of the fighting until fully one-third of all human beings on earth die if we apply that to the population of earth as it is today that means something on the order of 2 and 1/2 billion people die billion with a B this means for example Eve that in World War two a total of 80 million people died horrific but that means also that 30 times more people will be killed as a result of this conflict in Revelation than died in world war two thirty times then is with the sealed judgments after the sixth in the series of judgments there's another interlude this interlude the one that we find in chapter 10 begins with another appearance of this divine being called the mighty angel now I feel certain that this is a manifestation of God and is what is was called the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament this mighty angel then swore to heaven that there would be no more delay until the hidden plan of God was brought to completion as the intent and purpose of the gospel now takes its full effect this mighty angel held a very small scroll in his hand and very strangely he ordered John to eat it the scroll was essentially an Oracle from God that John was to digest now at first the scroll tasted sweet but kind of went sour in his stomach this means that on the surface the Oracle that was delivered to John was welcome news but as it took its fuller effect it turned to extreme sorrow so chapter 11 then concluded with the rather continued with the interlude and John was given a vision of the Third Temple in Jerusalem and he was told to measure it however the outer courts were reserved for Gentiles so they were not to be part of this measurement exercise next John was shown that there would be two mysterious witnesses that God would send to prophesy now prophets were always sent to give warning to God's people warning of impending disaster if they didn't shape up and turn from their sin therefore it's no wonder that these two witnesses operated in Jerusalem and they were given a protected period of 42 months to prophesy and then that protection was removed the world and the Jewish people blamed those two witnesses for all the calamities that have been happening and they were overjoyed when the Antichrist killed them they were so de tested that the Jews set aside their strict laws of burial and allowed those bodies to lay right where they were cut down in the city streets of Jerusalem for three days but at the 3 and 1/2 day mark God breathed the breath of life into those corpses and they came alive and they were raptured up to heaven very likely these two witnesses were Elijah and Moses now following that God caused a great earthquake to hit Jerusalem and the immediate surrounding area and it caused 7,000 people to die and a tenth of all structures to collapse into rubble this ended the interlude so now the 7th trumpet was blown and the seventh and final trumpet judgment happened now it's dubious to call what occurred a judgment in the way we usually think of it because what we read is that it is at this moment upon the seventh trumpet that God declares that the kingdom of God is now the new ruling government of planet Earth but also that it was time to end and to repay the rage of the Gentile nations who had rebelled against him and troubled his people for century after century John has shown the Ark of the Covenant inside the heavenly temple to reinforce that all the covenants all the promises that God had made to the Hebrew people remained intact and in force that ends the first section of Revelation that brings us now to Revelation chapter 12 Revelation chapter 12 begins a new sequence of visions that John received many Bible scholars say that this sequence continues until verse 5 of chapter 15 now GK Beale goes a step further and subdivides this section of Revelation into seven divisions he identifies those seven divisions by noting that each is marked at the beginning by the words and behold or and I saw now the divisions he identifies are first the conflict of the serpent with the woman in her seed that's chapter 12 second the persecution by the beasts of the sea that's chapter 13 verses 1 through 10 next the persecution by the beasts of the land that's chapter 13 11 through 18 fourth the lamb and the hundred and forty-four thousand standing on Mount Zion that's chapter 14 verses one through five fifth the proclamation of the gospel and of judgment by three angels that's chapter 14 verses six through thirteen six the son of man's harvest of the earth chapter 14 verse 14 through 20 and in seventh the Saints victory over the sea beasts and then their victory song that's chapter 15 verses two three and four now I I don't necessarily hold with his exact choice of terms nor claim that there isn't another or perhaps even maybe even a better way to subdivide chapters 12 through 15 but his has merit and there's no need to nitpick it that he identifies seven divisions he says is not coincidental it's not arbitrary because we've just come from a section of the Bible that speaks of seven seal judgments and seven trumpet judgments so seven divisions is logical and at least it fits the pattern again just take all that for what it's worth now regarding chapter twelve the overall picture is how it is Satan that is behind all the evil that is engulfed Humanity in the earth the devil may not be the direct persecutor of God's people whether those people are the Israelites or believers George Gentile however he is the source on a spiritual level of the trials and tribulations that pagan mankind has directed at God's worshipers over the centuries and yet we see that God only allows certain boundaries of space and time for Satan to operate within often he has given well-defined limits of where and when he is permitted to carry out his wicked rebellion for instance in chapter 11 we saw that as badly as Satan wanted to kill those two witnesses God wouldn't let it happen until the predetermined time of three and one-half years have elapsed for the two witnesses to complete their task a prophesy and it had to occur in Jerusalem now we've discussed in earlier chapters that revelation is a mix of the literal and of the symbolic in fact sometimes some of the information can be simultaneously literal and symbolic now what can be difficult is sorting out which parts are to be taken literally and which are to be taken symbolically depending on how much weight one assigns to the literal or the symbolic side of the balance scale that's gonna have a great deal to do with how one interprets the book of Revelation but make no mistake there is but one correct way to understand the revelation and that is what we're searching for although I have no doubt will not achieve it with any kind of perfection now we may not know for certain which way is correct until some of these events begin to happen and yet if we set aside predetermined doctrines man-made prejudices will no doubt get much closer to the truth so I can tell you with a fairly high level of confidence the rebel Revelation chapter 12 is on balance mostly symbolic but of course the real challenge then becomes what - each of these several symbols symbolize and I maintained that as always the same way these symbols were used in in other places in the Old Testament at times in the New Testament that's how were to understand them here as opposed to assigning them entirely new or unique meanings I mentioned last week that several hundred years ago when the Bible was divided into chapters and verses that while the intention was good at times the execution was less than ideal it is my contention that the final verse of chapter 11 should have been the first verse of chapter 12 so as we read chapter 12 I'm gonna include 1119 to start it all off so open your Bibles to Revelation chapter 12 if you have a complete Jewish Bible its page 15 43 Revelation chapter 12 and we're gonna read it so starting with 11 19 which is where I think that's what I think either be 12 1 then the temple of God in heaven was opened and the Ark of the Covenant was seen in his temple and there were flashes of lightning voices peals of thunder and earthquake and violet hail now a great sign was seen in heaven a woman clothed with the Sun under her feet the moon on her head a crown of twelve stars she was pregnant she was about to give birth she screamed in the agony of labor another sign was seen in heaven there was a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and on its heads were seven royal crowns its tail swept a third of the stars out of heaven threw them down to the earth it stood in front of the woman about to give birth so that it might devour the child the moment it was born she gave birth to a son a male child the one who will rule all the nations with a staff of iron but her child was snatched up to God and to his throne and she fled into the desert where she has a place prepared by God so that she can be taken care of for 1260 days next there was a battle in heaven Mihal all right Michael Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon and the dragon and his angels fought back but it was not strong enough to win so that there was no longer any place for them in heaven and the Great Dragon was thrown out that ancient serpent also known as the devil and Satan the deceiver of the whole world he was hurled down to earth and his angels were hurled down with him then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying now have come God's victory power and kingship and the authority of his Messiah because the accuser of our brothers who accuses them day and night before God has been thrown out they defeated him because of the lambs blood and because of the message of their witness even when facing death they did not cling to life therefore rejoice heaven and you who live there but woe to you land and sea for the adversary has come down to you and he is very angry because he knows that his time is short when the dragon saw that he had been hurled down to the earth he went in pursuit of the woman who had given birth to the male child but the woman was given the two wings of the grey eagle so that she could fly to her place in the desert where she taken care of for a season and two seasons and half a season away from the Serpent's presence the serpent spewed water like a river out of its mouth after the woman in order to sweep her away in the flood but the land came to her rescue it opened its mouth swallowed up the river which the dragon had spewed out of its mouth the dragon was infuriated over the woman and went off to fight the rest of her children those who obey God's commands and bear witness to Yeshua then the dragon stood on the seashore that's some pretty dramatic stuff now the scene of chapter 11 19 takes place in heaven so does the scene of chapter 12:1 the Ark of the Covenant is revealed figuratively not literally since nothing physical exists in heaven and then a great sign is also revealed in heaven now understanding the connection between those two verses helps us to positively identify the symbolism of the sign of the woman clothed with the Sun now I said last time that the meaning of the revealing of the Ark of the Covenant heaven is that all of God's covenants and promises to Israel remain in force and intact even if at times it may only be on a spiritual level that is times when the jerusalem temple is not standing like today and the priesthood is dissolved as in our day means that large segments of the Torah cannot be observed however that is merely the earthly physical reality in heaven that is not the case the earthly physical Ark of the Covenant had gone missing for around seven centuries by the time of John the Apostle the writer of Revelation but the Ark's source and essence and highest meaning were to be found safely in God's heavenly temple you know it's it is somewhat ironic that in reality from the Lord's perspective his promises and Covenants and presence were not tied to were not dependent upon that golden chest that sat in the Holy of Holies for so many centuries before it was carried off by an enemy rather that chest was but a symbol it was built by human hands it was a symbol of the reality that God's promises covenants and presence were tied to and resided in heaven in my earlier lessons on the Torah I gave this strange paradigm the name of the reality of duality and the premise is that God's will is present first in heaven before it appears physically on earth and whatever appears on earth especially when it's of a physical nature such as the wilderness tabernacle or the ark it's just a shadow of its heavenly counterpart so to understand who that woman is of verse 1 we must first answer the question to whom were God's promises and Covenants directed to and when we consult the Torah we find the unequivocal answer to Israel no divine promise or covenant was given to Gentiles except by means of extension through those given to Israel thus the woman represents Israel and while I say that with full confidence I also acknowledge that much of the institutional Western Church says the woman's is the church inherently meaning of course Gentile believers Christians in the modern vernacular now Catholics say that the woman is Mary Mother of Jesus why is that said in a word replacement theology that is replacement theology is a church doctrine that insists that every covenant and promise made between God and Israel has been taken away from Israel transferred to the Gentile Church due to Israel's lack of faithfulness now I've covered this issue with you too many times to repeat so I'll only say that replacement theology is the worst sort of doctrinal error and is explicitly anti-semitism an action and an intent so if the woman is Israel what is all this about her being clothed in the Sun and her feet standing upon the moon wearing that crown of twelve stars now clearly all of these elements are symbolic symbolic of what there's no academic consensus on this some scholars see an allusion to the pagan Sun goddess which was a widespread very popular cult during the first 380 other scholars see the sign of the zodiac and all of these elements and indeed these sorts of pagan religious concepts had crept into parts of Judaism by John's time they even are found in mosaics on the floors of synagogues however it seems awfully unlikely that John would employ pagan symbols to symbolize heavenly things in his apocalypse and if he did then perhaps we should regard his whole book as suspect rather both of these theories based on paganism regarding the symbol above this symbolism of the Sun the moon and the stars and the woman herself come from scholars who forget one important fact these visions are from God John just wrote him down while the visions were John's the content was God's so we don't have a simple Hebrew fisherman from Galilee writing down God's Oracle's and visions of the future according to Greek myth and pagan culture now let's address the matter of the 12 stars clear crown now biblically stars are often figurative of angels Christ Himself is called the bright morning star so could the crown with the 12 stars that the woman is wearing be representing 12 angels and if it is then how does that square with that woman symbolizing Israel tough questions however the answer can be arrived at fairly confidently if we just turn our Bibles back to the Torah the symbolism the Sun and the moon and the 12 stars can be directly traced to Genesis 37 starting with verse 9 nearly word-for-word this is the story of young Joseph speaking about a couple of dreams that he had starting in well go ahead and start back in verse 5 Genesis 37 verses 5 through 11 Yosef Joseph had a dream which he told his brothers and that made them hate him all the more he said to them listen while I tell you about this dream of mine we were tying up bundles of wheat in the wheel in the field when suddenly my bundle got up by itself and it stood upright and then your bundles came and gathered around mine and prostrating themselves before it and his brothers retorted yes you will certainly be our King you'll do a great job of bossing us around and they hated him still more for his dreams and for what he said he had another dream which he told his brothers here I had another dream and there were the Sun the Moon and Eleven stars prostrating themselves before me and he told his father too as well as his brothers but his father rebuked him what is this dream you've had do you really expect me your mother and your brothers to come and prostrate ourselves before you on the ground his brothers were jealous of him but his father kept the matter in mind so we can let scripture define itself and we don't have to speculate Joseph speaks of the Sun the Moon and Eleven stars bowing down to him in a dream and when Joseph tells his brothers father Jacob called Israel about his dream his father is incredulous he says you really expect and your mother and your brothers to come and prostrate ourselves before you it is true Joseph mentions eleven stars and not 12 why because he's one of the twelve brothers and this is alluding only to eleven of them not all twelve because those eleven in his story his dream are going to bow down to him so the son is to be seen symbolically as Israel's father the moon symbolically as Israel's mother and the twelve star symbolically as the twelve tribes of Israel in other words Israel is to be understood as meaning the twelve tribes as well as their immediate ancestors who are all part of the Covenant promise at the least that includes Jacob and his two wives and two concubines and it could well mean even to include passage would allow it the meaning would allow it it could include Isaac and his father Abraham since the line of this covenant promise begins with Abraham it continues on through Isaac then through his son Jacob and then to Jacob's twelve sons the twelve tribes that form Israel so chapter twelve verse two then goes on to explain that the woman was pregnant and in labor now here's where we run into a passage that seems to be both literal and symbolic now few would argue that this part of John's vision depicts the birth of Messiah Yeshua and since we know he was born by his mother Mary Miriam was her Ebru name in what is described in the Gospel accounts as he actually fairly typical child birth even if conception was anything but typical then in one sense the woman of verse one is Mary however this entire matter presented symbolically is giving us a far bigger picture the picture is that the savior of all mankind is coming from a specific people Israel the Messiah would be a Hebrew not a Gentile and yet in another sense Israel's grand purpose for having been created and set apart for God was to produce the Redeemer and the new Lord of the world so that he would replace the old Lord of the world Satan thus from that perspective Mary is rather incidental than all of this and if the point was to glorify Mary it would have been simple enough just to call her by name so while it's true true enough that an individual woman Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ the Old Testament also regularly uses the term woman as a collective figure and that collective figure typically symbolizes the new the redeemed and the idealized Jerusalem in Israel in fact generally speaking when the idea is to speak about the new redeemed Israel the term used is Zion Zion redeemed Israel is often spoke of figuratively as a woman and her husband is Hoving again symbolically now I want to give you some scripture passages about Israel being symbolized as a woman whose husband is God in order to make this very important point we need to hang on to the rest of the book in Isaiah 54 starting with verse 1 sing barren woman who has never had a child burst into song shout for joy you have who have never been in labor for the deserted wife will have more children than the woman who was living with her husband says Adonai enlarge the space for your tent extend the curtains of your dwelling do not hold back lengthen your cords make your tent pegs firm for your husband is your maker at a nice AVA aute is his name the Holy One of Israel is your redeemer he will be called God of all the earth for Adonai has called you back like a wife abandoned and grief-stricken a wife married in her youth cannot be rejected says God briefly I abandoned you but with great compassion I am taking you back Jeremiah 320 but like a faithless woman who betrays her husband you house of Israel have betrayed me says that a not me huh Micah for 9 through 13 why are you crying out don't you have a king has your counsellor been destroyed that you are seized with pain like a woman and labour be in pain weren't to give birth like a woman in labor daughter of Zion for now you will go out of the city and live in the wilds till you reach Babel there you will be rescued there out and I will redeem you from the power of your enemies how many nations have gathered against you and they say letter B to file let's gloat over Zion but they don't know the thoughts about an IKE they don't understand his plan for he has gathered them like sheaves on the threshing floor get up start threshing daughter of Zion for I will make your horns like iron and your hooves like bronze you will crush many peoples devout to devote their plunder to adenine and their wealth to the Lord of all the earth so in the Newton the Old Testament prophecies the depiction of Israel as a woman was common and thus the woman who is in birth pangs in Revelation chapter 12 is symbolic of Israel but now in verse 3 another character is introduced the great red dragon and his red dragon is said to have seven heads and ten horns and each of his seven heads wear a crown who or what is this creature well the answer that is given to us in the same chapter in verse nine revelation 12:9 the Great Dragon was thrown out that ancient serpent also known as the devil and Satan the deceiver of the whole world he was hurled down to the earth and his angels were hurled down with him so the answer is the great red dragon with the seven heads and the ten horns is Satan the devil now we're gonna talk much more about that when we get to this verse I just wanted to get the dragon identified for the moment and then we're told that the dragon Satan swept a third of the stars out of heavens and threw them down to earth what or who are the stars just a few words ago twelve stars were twelve tribes of Israel so is this still talking about the twelve tribes or is it about actual stars in the sky or are the stars symbolic of angels what I think is happening here is that John is being given this panoramic view of the past and also of the future so what we're reading his future to us and some of it was in the distant past even for John for the moment at least we're being given the heavenly perspective and while it might be hard to get our minds wrapped around the reality is that heaven is a spiritual place and it exists outside the boundaries of time on earth we are bound by time everything we know everything we do has time as our inescapable prison thus on earth things have to happen in a definite sequence we express these as well 1st 2nd 3rd so on for his past present future the steps of a sequence take time whether it's fractions of a second or it's multiple centuries of time so when we read in this passage about the dragon Satan and the things he does we have what in heaven is no time at all but in earthly terms we could be talking about eons of time and what he does is to appear as a dragon and to appear as a creature with seven heads and ten horns and he sweeps a third of the stars out of heaven and he stands before the pregnant woman so that the instance she gives birth he can destroy her offspring John's vision tells us many things the devil has done and he will do however for we Earthlings that are bound to time we can only have actions that take place in the past or in the present or in the future for those who reside in heaven for those who are a part of the spiritual realm no such distinctions no such limitations bound to time occur there is no past present and future in heaven or in the spirit world so I suspect that what John saw was just as perplexing and challenging to understand and get a little grip upon for him as all this is for us so I have little doubt that the dragon's action of sweeping a third of the stars out of heaven and on to onto earth is from the human standpoint an action that took place in the past even Christ spoke about it in temporal terms as something that had happened in the past Luke 10:18 Yeshua said to me I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven and yet Daniel also spoke about something similar although it's to take place from Daniels perspective in the future and as you'll see he could not have been recalling the past Daniel 8 8 through 11 the male goat then became extremely strong but when it was strong the Big Horn was broken and in its place arose what appeared to be four horns in which the direction in the direction of the four winds of heaven out of one of them came a little horn which grew extremely big in the directions of the south and the east and in the direction of the glory it grew so great that it reached the army of heaven and it hurled some of the army and the stars to the ground and trampled on me yes it even considered itself as great as the prints of the army the regular burnt offering was taken away from him and the place of the sanctuary was thrown down so this prophecy of Satan removing stars and having them fall to earth is speaking about fallen angels he did he did it already in one context eons ago the way we deal with time on earth and it seems that according to Daniel it's gonna happen again but in a different context and in a different setting in the future we have no more details about it than that it's all we have but what about the appearance of Satan having seven heads and ten horns each head having a crown we're going to talk about that next time [Music] you you

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Published: Fri Dec 28 2018